Do not settle for an email blasting service or a newswire overloaded with financial statements. Standard Newswire gets your news into the hands of working journalists, broadcast hosts, and news producers.
Find out how you can start using Standard Newswire to
Sign Up to Receive Press Releases:
Standard Newswire™ LLC
209 W. 29th Street, Suite 6202
New York, NY 10001, USA.
(212) 290-1585
Documents show Lerner Worried about 'pitfalls' of disclosures to Congress
Documents reveal that Lerner was pressured by both Democrat Sen. Carl Levin and Republican Sen. John McCain for IRS action against political advocacy groups
Contact: Jill Farrell, Judicial Watch, 202-646-5188
WASHINGTON, April 9, 2015 /Standard Newswire/ -- Judicial Watch today released a new batch of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents, including an email from former IRS official Lois Lerner in February 2012 asking that a program be set up to "put together some training points to help them [IRS staffers] understand the potential pitfalls" of revealing too much information to Congress. The documents also contain a Lerner email from 2013 in which she says she is willing to take the blame on some aspects of the scandal. She also indicates that she "understands why the IRS criteria" leading to the targeting of Tea Party and other opponents of the President Obama "might raise questions."
The documents were released under court order in one of the Judicial Watch's ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits about the Obama IRS' abuses (Judicial Watch v. IRS (No. 1:13-cv-1559).
Included in the email chain is Lerner's most extended public discussion thus far of the IRS scandal. Lerner details her defenses and interactions with TIGTA investigators in a lengthy, rambling email dated January 31, 2013, to TIGTA investigator Troy Paterson:
We feel your folks are being too narrow in their view and have decided that because of the language on the earlier BOLO [Be On the Lookout] list regarding Tea Party, everything that followed was tainted…They also don't seem to be taking a big picture look at what we have done… When we describe that process, they acknowledge that that approach sounds reasonable, but seem to be saying that reasonableness is overshadowed by the fact that the criteria look bad to folks on the outside, so there is no way we could cure the initial bad impression.
We understand why the criteria might raise questions….So, I'm not sure how they [TIGTA] investigators are looking at we were politically motivated, or what they are looking for with regard to targeting. They didn't seem to understand the difference between IRS acting in a politically motivated manner and front line staff people using less than stellar judgment. I am willing to take the blame for not having provided sufficient direction initially, which may have resulted in front line staff doing things that appeared to be politically motivated, but I am not on board that anything that occurred here shows that the IRS was politically motivated in the actions taken.
